


Bridge of Dreams

by themorninglark



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, Gen, Kunimi POV, M/M, Magic Realism, vintage arcade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-18 18:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8171570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: Yume-no-Tsuribashi, Oikawa said, had come to him in a dream, appropriately enough.
  He had woken, and there was the sound of rushing water outside his window, and when he looked up the dogwood flowers were falling from the branches, like so many little white stars making ripples on the surface of the river. Or, if you looked at them another way, like so many little LED lights blinking another kind of magic. The insert new coin kind.


In which Oikawa and Kenma run a vintage arcade by the pier in Yokohama, and Kunimi plays Pac-Man on Wednesdays.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Music for this fic: [Wintergatan's "Sommarfågel"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwGvnS62ee0)

 

 

 

It is a fresh day in autumn when Kunimi wakes up with a coin nestled in the palm of his hand.

 _Well,_ he thinks, _that's inconvenient._

He swings himself out of bed, leaves it on his table and goes to brush his teeth.

It is a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays, Kenma resets the _Weekly High Scores_ leaderboard and lets Kunimi have the first crack at Pac-Man, so Kunimi gets dressed and heads out with half an egg sandwich in his bag and a quick gulp of tepid milk coffee that Hanamaki's left unfinished on the front counter, for his roommate is, if nothing else, always _considerate_ that way.

Kunimi, on his part, is more than happy to make do with leftovers if it saves him some effort at this hour, and it means Hanamaki has to do all the washing up anyway.

Zipping up his windbreaker, he settles on his bike, puts his satchel into the basket and rides a path he's ridden a thousand times before, turns and takes himself eastward, coasting through the streets of Yokohama like a leaf on the wayward wind. By the sidewalks, he sees them start to pile up. One by one, they turn, float down to the pier and let the sea carry them away to warmer climes.

It'll be muffler weather soon. Kunimi thinks longingly of hot spiced tea, tasting like cinnamon.

It's not until he's cycled three blocks down the boardwalk, turned into the parking shed behind the Red Brick Warehouse, and reached into his pocket for his keychain that he realises it's not the only thing rattling around in there.

( _So that's how it is._ No wonder that pocket had felt unusually heavy today.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

There's a spark in Oikawa's eyes when Kunimi hangs up his jacket behind the front counter, and it's not a reflection.

"What's _this_ , Kunimi-chan?" he sings, reaching over without hesitation to seize Kunimi's hand. He turns it upwards and peels Kunimi's languid fingers away from the loose fist he's made, one by one, like he is unwrapping a delicious secret.

"Something that followed me from home," says Kunimi. "I think it fell out of my dreams."

"Ooh," breathes Oikawa.

A flash of pink light catches Kunimi's eye, and he glances up. Down the aisle, and the aisles beyond, the arcade blinks alive like a _welcome_ bespelled in glorious, nostalgic technicolour, jaunty strains of 8-bit earworm tunes ringing out all at once in pleasantly cacophonous chorus. There's Kenma in an oversized cream-coloured sweater, moving between machines with his customary efficiency as he switches them on for the day. It is all very familiar. In that moment, it is all very reassuring.

Oikawa's _ooh_ , the way he drops his hand to his hip and takes a half-step back, the better to _see_ with, is not quite as reassuring.

" _Well._ How very fascinating," says Oikawa, and Kunimi can almost hear the glimmer in his voice.

"Do you want it?" he asks, extending his palm to Oikawa.

Oikawa's eyebrows shoot up. "You don't?"

"Not really," says Kunimi. "You and Kenma-san are probably better with this sort of thing."

"Oh, please, I hardly think so," scoffs Oikawa, with a nonchalant wave of his hand.

Kunimi flips it into the air, catches it, and huffs out a deflated exhale.

"What am I supposed to do with it?" he asks.

Oikawa smiles, and shrugs, in that maddening and totally unhelpful way of his. He pivots on his heel and turns to lean over the counter on his elbows, restless gaze bouncing off the walls till it finds Kenma, comes to a pause for breath, and everything stills.

Sunlight's warming their faces now, sunlight spilling through the high windows across the centre of the arcade, into the coin in Kunimi's hand. Kunimi closes his fist, presses it against his palm. It's still cool.

"You're just like Pudding-chan. You don't like what you don't understand," is Oikawa's diagnosis.

"You mean, we're _sensible_ … maybe I could get rid of it in the Pac-Man machine," Kunimi muses, to a scandalised yelp from Oikawa.

"Kunimi-chan! How rude! If you ask _me_ , I think you should shower it with _love_."

"With love," Kunimi repeats, flatly.

Oikawa's reply is a slow, deliberate drawl. "With _l-o-v-e_ —"

"Sounds like a pain," Kunimi sighs, and reaches into his bag to retrieve his breakfast.

"That's how you know it's worth your time," says Oikawa, and Kunimi, though he does not feel all that much consoled, knows from the way that Oikawa's glance flits over to Kenma that he will not be argued with on some points, and this is one of them. Still, he cannot resist getting one last jibe in, if it's _Oikawa_ ; he does so leave himself wide open at times like these.

"Are you saying Kenma-san is a pain, Oikawa-san?" he murmurs into Oikawa's ear as he straightens, and sees the shell of it blush a satisfying pink.

" _You're_ a pain," Oikawa retorts, sticking his tongue out at Kunimi for good measure.

 

 

* * *

 

 

(a crackling, then, and a static on the brink of wakefulness, running through the arcade—)

And Kunimi, counting the small change at the cash register, sees Kenma approach. He slides comfortably into the space by Oikawa's side and under his arm, and bids Kunimi a wordless _good morning_ with a wave and a yawn. It is contagious. Kunimi yawns, too.

"Do you need coffee?" Kenma asks, straight to the point. Kunimi, fervently, nods.

"I'll go and get some after opening. Tooru?"

Oikawa wrinkles his nose. "You know how I _hate_ coffee, Pudding-chan."

"If I keep asking," says Kenma, stubbornly, "you might decide to try it one day."

"Ha," Oikawa laughs, and turns to go to the front doors.

His arm drifts off Kenma's shoulder, and his hand catches Kenma's, instead, without looking; their fingers lace together briefly and easily, come apart again like the wind ghosting through the cracks in the wall.

(The picture _clicks_ in Kunimi's mind. A film-still image, coming into focus as Kenma tucks his hair behind his ear, sorts through yesterday's mail with keen eyes. _Of course._ It's Oikawa's high school sweater, baggy on Kenma; it's just like Kenma, anyway, to carry it off like an embrace made for him.)

The shifting light in the sconce by the entrance seems to brighten at Oikawa's touch.

"Showtime," Oikawa proclaims with dramatic relish, like he always does.

Kenma meets Kunimi's gaze and rolls his eyes, like he always does. Kunimi gives him a wan smile in return.

"We're not running a circus," Kenma adds today, wandering behind Kunimi to fiddle with the console, and Kunimi thinks, _he's in a good mood._ The piped-in music grows subtly louder. It's a soundtrack Kunimi knows well, an infinite loop of video game nostalgia bright for the listening, for the losing and the winning and the fleeting, liminal escape, over and over again.

Like a held breath, Oikawa pauses. He looks back.

"Well, you know, I've always had ambitions of being a ringmaster. Or a Master of Ceremonies. Don't you think I'd be an awfully _dashing_ one, Pudding-chan? Should we rebrand ourselves the _Circus of Dreams_?"

Kenma barely dignifies this train of thought with a glance upwards.

Oikawa grins, irrepressible, and flips the sign on the front doors as he flings them _open_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

_Welcome to Yume-no-Tsuribashi. Make a wish._

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

There should have been some more exciting _origin story_ , perhaps, for how Kunimi had found himself in a place like this; _they don't make arcades like this anymore_ , or so goes the word on the street in Yokohama, in stations and alleyways, by the shadows of lampposts that overlook the sleepless harbour, and its dusk-bright dancing lights.

It sits, not in the Red Brick Warehouse itself but just outside, in a disused building nondescript enough to escape notice, and all of the machines can be relied upon to break down at least once a day, and they have an _original Space Invaders_ , scavenged from some shipyard's trash pile, that only works every other Tuesday and on New Year's Eve.

Strangely, all of this had proven to be a draw rather than a deterrent; a place for _true_ gamers, so to speak. Kunimi wonders if Kenma had known his arcade would become quite so popular. He thinks that if he had, Kenma might never have opened it, but then again—

There's Oikawa too, and Oikawa has his ways round things, not least of all _Kenma_ things.

Of course, the great irony of all this is that Kunimi, not a Yokohama native, had heard none of it in advance. He had simply found himself in a state of idle ennui after graduating with a degree in mathematics, and one day Hanamaki had sent him a text that contained a photo attachment of a _Help Wanted_ ad.

 _hey. saw this and thought of you. wanna work in an arcade?_ it said, and Kunimi, with nothing better to do, had thought, _well, why not_.

 

 

(No, it's not like he's the kind for exciting origin stories, anyway.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

As promised, Kenma goes and gets coffee. He brings Kunimi a milky latte that goes down easy, and accompanies him to the centre aisle for the first game of a Wednesday before the customers come.

 _A real vintage,_ Oikawa had said once, with a fond hand on the machine's side, running reverently across the blocky rainbow that spelled out PAC-MAN. It's been painstakingly restored to its original sunny yellow, probably by Oikawa; Kenma concerns himself more with the gears and guts of things than with their exterior, and it is thanks to him that all of their machines even work at all, but it is thanks to Oikawa that  _Yume-no-Tsuribashi_ is what it is. A dream, breathed and spun into life.

_We found it in this shop full of old gaming junk and knick-knacks in Nipponbashi, and it was just collecting dust in a corner! Can you imagine!_

Kunimi can imagine: not the machine itself, lying neglected, but Oikawa tugging Kenma over to it, his eyes lit up at the discovery.

Kenma's deft fingers fly over the controls in an override pattern that only he knows. When he steps back, _insert new coin_ fades from the screen and a _new game_ , on the house, winks an invitation at Kunimi.

He rests his right hand on the buttons, maps out _up_ , _down_ , _left_ , _right_ , and presses start.

Oikawa, by the doors, welcomes the first trickle of curious tourists, casual wanderers, shows them where they can exchange their notes for a handful of coins and dispenses the usual cheerful warning about how _moody_ Kuri-chan can be (because, of course, Oikawa has nicknamed all his favourite machines, and of course they have a _first-generation purikura_ booth nestled somewhere in a corner, despite Kenma's repeated insistence that _purikura_ 's qualifications as an _arcade game_ are, at best, sketchy).

Kunimi navigates the first ten levels with his usual adept ease. Under Kenma's watchful eye, he keeps going, and posts a very decent score before the pink ghost finally gets the better of him.

"They call this one the _ambusher_ ," Kenma remarks, raising his fingertips to briefly touch the loading screen where the pink ghost lies in wait, pale and flickering.

Kunimi moves aside to let Kenma reprogram the game to its usual state. "Do they?"

"Yeah. All the original Pac-Man enemies were designed with personalities. They're supposed to be predictable."

Kunimi watches the pink ghost scoot over to a corner, fade all the way out of sight and fuzz back into focus. The ghosts are solid once more, lined up in a neat row for the next player.

 _Predictable._ No wonder he finds Pac-Man so comforting.

Then Oikawa's calling his name across the room, and Kunimi goes to help someone with an _Asteroids_ machine that's jammed again, on the same level that always loops and glitches. As he pricks his ears to listen to the wind picking up over the sea, he thinks that autumn in Yokohama has brought a temperament to match.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Over his break, he takes a book out of his satchel, steeps a cup of tea, and settles into his usual spot in the chair with the red cushion.

He looks up at the calendar that hangs on the wall. At the end of every day, Oikawa puts a cross over the date with a flourish on the tail of the _X_ , because Oikawa is surprisingly compulsive over little details like keeping his calendar up to date; perhaps, more tellingly, he always looks forward to tomorrow.

A moment later, Kenma comes into the room and joins him at the table, bento box in hand. He unwinds his headphones, plugs them in and props his phone up as he starts on his late lunch. From the way his brow's furrowed in concentration, Kunimi guesses, he's watching some kind of _Let's Play_ video.

They continue in companionable silence for a while, until Kunimi shifts and feels something jutting into his seat. He reaches into his back pocket and takes out the coin.

Last he remembers, he had slipped it into his jacket before the workday started. Still, here it is now, so he chucks it onto the table, and Kenma's gaze flicks downwards at the movement. Unlike Oikawa, his eyes, so startling otherwise, do not light up, for Kenma wears his curiosity in his stillness; he is _still_ , now, a picture framed for a moment in sun-flecked dust motes before he sets down his fork and reaches up to remove his headphones from his ears, looking questioningly at Kunimi.

"I woke up this morning," Kunimi explains, "and this was in my hand."

Oh," says Kenma. It is the kind of _oh_ that hangs in midair, waiting for new words to brush it lightly aside.

"Is it yours?" Kenma continues.

Kunimi shrugs. "I guess. It won't leave me alone."

"I'm sorry. That sounds annoying."

"Thanks. I think so too."

Kenma shoots him a small, sympathetic smile, and Kunimi sighs.

"Oikawa-san told me I had to shower it with _l-o-v-_ "

"He _would_ say something silly like that," Kenma murmurs.

Kunimi slides his bookmark back into place, props his head on one hand and reaches out with the other, resting a hesitant fingertip on the coin. It's caught some of the arcade's colour, and he can see whips of neon light shimmering on its surface. When he blinks, they're gone.

"I don't even know why I have something like this. There's nothing special about me."

It is no humility. Merely a fact.

"Mmm. I don't know about that," says Kenma. He doesn't elaborate, simply picks up his fork again, spears a slice of _miso_ eggplant and puts it into his mouth.

Kunimi knows that coming from someone like Kenma, it is no platitude. Merely a fact. One that is offered for the taking, or not, and either way, Kenma makes the pronouncement like it is something foregone.

The more Kunimi stares at the coin, the more something stirs in him, like the searing midday sun on the waves. He picks it up and gives it a spin. It comes to a slow rest, tilting on its axis for a moment suspended before falling to one unmarked side, identical to the other. There are no heads or tails here. No _leaving it up to the coin to decide_.

"What do you think Oikawa-san meant by _love_?" he asks.

"I wonder that all the time," Kenma mutters, lips twitching like they're straining to bridge a sigh and a laugh, but it is _reflex_ , Kunimi knows, and so too is _this_ movement now that Kunimi has seen a thousand times across this very table, across the counter, from a distance; Kenma's hand wandering absently to the loose neckline of the cream-coloured sweater he's wearing.

He finds a stray thread near his heart, toys with it, unthinking, in a perfect mirror of the way that Oikawa does sometimes, and it is the same way that Oikawa threads his fingers through Kenma's fine hair when they steal their fleeting moments on the arcade floor, and Kunimi, in spite of himself, can't help hiding a secret smile at the sight.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 _Yume-no-Tsuribashi_ , Oikawa said, had come to him in a dream, appropriately enough.

He had woken, and there was the sound of rushing water outside his window, and when he looked up the dogwood flowers were falling from the branches, like so many little white stars making ripples on the surface of the river. Or, if you looked at them another way, like so many little LED lights blinking another kind of magic. The _insert new coin_ kind.

By way of polite conversation, Kunimi had asked to hear the story behind the arcade's name sometime in his first week, when he had not yet learned to be wary of giving Oikawa openings for tall tales. It had not taken him too long to feel a tinge of faint regret at opening this floodgate.

Kenma had calmly removed his _houjicha_ teabag, set it down on the cracked saucer and said, _we were in Shizuoka. At the actual Bridge of Dreams. You left that part out, Tooru._

 _Details,_ Oikawa had said, smiling; he had curled a hand around Kenma's, and added, with a petulant toss of his head, _I knew you'd mention that, anyway._

_It was raining. I got wet._

_I sacrificed my hoodie for you, Pudding-chan!_

_…details._

 

 

* * *

 

 

After closing time, when Kenma's on his rounds to power down the machines and Oikawa's trying to coax some missing balls from the black holes in the _Astro Boy_ pinball machine, Kunimi finishes the day's accounts and closes the books, satisfied.

"Good work today," Oikawa says as he walks over. He stretches his arms lazily overhead as he cracks his neck from side to side, unfurls a fist and lets a handful of pinballs, none the worse for wear, roll over the countertop. "It got _super_ busy, huh?"

Kunimi picks up an empty stationery cup he has set aside for precisely this purpose, and collects the lot before they tumble onto the floor. "Yes, it did. Please don't do that, Oikawa-san."

"But your reflexes are always so _reliable_ , Kunimi-chan!"

"That's not a reason to do that, Oikawa-san."

"But if I don't keep you on your toes _somehow_ , you'll fall _asleep_ where you stand—"

"That's not true," says Kunimi, poker-faced, knowing full-well it is not _untrue_ , either, but it's not like there's any particular need to say that much.

Oikawa's teasing wink is answer enough, and Kunimi turns to reach for his jacket.

As he pulls it on, he feels the weight of the coin in the left inner pocket, where it has apparently decided to return, with any luck, to take up permanent residence. It _is_ warmer in there, and it is cold out. Kunimi can empathise.

Perhaps it is the overly familiar way it presses against his heart when he zips his jacket up. Perhaps it is the strange sense that, at any moment, he might look away and find it in his palm again, or the chance, always present, that he might wake up the next morning and find more coins falling out of his dreams; perhaps, in the end, it is simply the sight of _Yume-no-Tsuribashi_ in Oikawa's elegant hand, written on the wooden signboard behind the counter as he slings his satchel over his shoulder and gets ready to head off for the night.

 _Make a wish_ , reads the line underneath, and Kunimi finds a question rising in his mind.

"Did you make a wish, Oikawa-san?" Kunimi asks, glancing back at Oikawa. "When you crossed the bridge of dreams in Shizuoka?"

Oikawa's eyebrows rise slightly. "Of course I did. What's the point, otherwise?"

"What did you wish for?"

"Well, isn't that obvious? I thought you were _smart_! Don't you know what they say about that bridge?"

" _Wishes for love come true on Yume-no-Tsuribashi,_ " Kunimi recites, like a guidebook.

Oikawa's lips curve upwards, a warm, half-moon smile.

Kunimi stuffs his hands into his pockets. "But you'd already met Kenma-san, then. You were together."

"All the more reason to wish for love, don't you think?" says Oikawa, airily, and there is a butterfly edge to his response, to the way he turns his head in that moment, flighty and reckless and with all the poise of someone who had _wished_ , and _believed_ , and more than that—

Someone who goes on wishing, still, wears his wishes spun garland-fine and silken, strung up like all the lights on the city's winding streets, all the stars in the sky.

Kunimi does not hear Kenma call, then, but Oikawa stirs to look over his shoulder, and when Kunimi follows his gaze, _Tooru_ drifts across the echoing space to his ears. _Tooru_ , in Kenma's soft voice.

"I'm going upstairs," says Kenma. "Come to bed soon."

It is no command, nor a request, simply—

An invisible thread that winds around Oikawa, binds them in ways that Kunimi cannot even begin to see.

"Okay," says Oikawa, soft, too, to match.

Kunimi takes his cue to say _see you tomorrow_ , and step out into the waiting night.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he gets home, he shuffles off his shoes and murmurs a _tadaima_ that no one hears.

Hanamaki, when he's around, can reliably be found occupying the entire couch, his legs dangling off the armrest. It suits Kunimi fine, for he prefers sitting cross-legged at the coffee table. On his more lethargic days, he drags himself over to the plush grey Totoro-shaped beanbag that lies by the bay window, naps like a cat in a sunbeam, and wakes, sometimes, to the sound of the news on the radio, or Hanamaki's off-key singing from the kitchen.

Kunimi deposits his bag in his room, heats up leftover curry for supper and watches whatever's on TV. He's only half-paying attention, but tonight, at least, he chances upon a travel documentary, which marginally beats a celebrity talkshow, a series of candy-coloured music videos, or, most commonly, an overwrought drama. Hanamaki loves overwrought dramas.

 _You don't have a romantic bone in your body, Kunimi,_ he'd declared, once, as Kunimi passed by the living room with a bowl of instant ramen in his hand, and complained that Hanamaki's choice of entertainment was ruining dinnertime.

Kunimi had not bothered to argue the truth of that statement, nor to dispute Hanamaki's ready disparagement.

Tonight, however, as he tips his head back to stare at the ceiling fan spinning overhead, dances the coin idly between his knuckles and looks at the way it catches blurry images from the TV, he finds himself wondering, for once.

He thinks he sees some distant memory flash across the coin's surface, like a mirror inverted inwards, glacier-blue.

 

 

* * *

 

 

To hear Kenma's version of their story, there was nothing _romantic_ about it at all—

 _He needed sugar for his tea, and I was awake._  
_...that's all?  
_ _Yeah. That's all. Then he moved in and never left._

A shared insomnia had seemed to Kunimi, _seems_ , still, a rather pedestrian sort of reason for someone like Oikawa to be with someone like Kenma, though he supposes it _would_ have taken a hurricane of Oikawa's stature to make a stir in Kenma's life.

It _is_ entirely believable, given Oikawa's penchant to send him texts with tiny food videos at 3 AM, and the number of times Kunimi has woken at odd hours to see _applepi_ still logged in online. Sometimes, he is simply idling. Mostly, he is playing some MMO or other.

 _Pedestrian_ is not a word Kunimi would have chosen to describe them. It is the kind of word he keeps in reserve for himself, his own manner of coasting by predictably, like a Pac-Man ghost.

Yet, when he looks up from the counter to see them pass each other in the aisles, the backs of their hands brushing, there is everything contained in the simplicity of the gesture, and there is everything, too, in the way Oikawa falls quiet around Kenma, and for no one else.

 

 

* * *

 

 

After that Wednesday, Kunimi's routine continues, largely uninterrupted.

It's not really something that he can _ignore_ , the way the dream coin keeps following him around, but then again, it's not really something that makes an _imposition_ of itself, either. Some days, he wakes with it under his pillow; some days, it falls out of his book when he flips it open on his coffee break. Some days, he _does_ forget about it altogether, and it is on those days that it shows up nestled in his pocket, again, next to his heart.

There is no real pattern to its coming and going. It is simply _there_ , a constant companion, a reminder of some unanswered conundrum in his life.

"It feels like it's getting heavier," he tells Hanamaki, one morning, when he finds the coin on the windowsill. "I think I'm supposed to do something with it."

It is a Monday. The arcade is closed on Mondays, and so Kunimi is still in his pajamas. He has no intention of getting out of them all day long. Hanamaki, pausing in the doorway, slips on his shiny black work shoes and squints down at his reflection in their polished surface.

"Look who's figured _something_ out. Give the boy a prize," he says.

Kunimi picks up Hanamaki's jacket off the back of the couch and tosses it at him. "Don't be sarcastic, Hanamaki-san."

Hanamaki grins, making the catch one-handed as he adjusts his tie so it's even more askew than it was a moment ago. Kunimi doesn't bother telling him that. " _You're_ one to talk about sarcasm. Anyway, it's a coin. How hard can it be? There can't be _that_ many things you do with a coin."

"I don't know.' Kunimi shrugs. "Spend it. Flip it to make choices. Throw it down a wishing well."

"Well, have you _tried_ any of these things?"

"I tried to use it at the vending machine near 7-11."

Hanamaki arches a curious eyebrow at him. "Guess it didn't work?"

Kunimi shakes his head. "No. It fell through the slot like thin air and came out at the coin return tray."

"You need a dream vending machine," Hanamaki remarks, "to spend a dream coin."

"Thanks. That's very insightful," says Kunimi.

"Tsk. _Sarcasm_."

Kunimi smiles, a concession that he allows Hanamaki in exchange for the leftover coffee on the kitchen table, and Hanamaki waves a flippant goodbye over his shoulder as he heads out. A moment later, Kunimi hears his bicycle wheeling down their walkway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

On a rare afternoon when he is cajoled by Oikawa to spend a lunch break outdoors, at the park by the pierside, he is somewhat bemused to come across the coin lying in the grass. His fingers brush it as he leans back, looks at the breaking waves in the distance.

The seagulls overhead are quiet today. Beside him, Oikawa is slurping loudly at his Cup Noodles. It remains a mystery to Kunimi how he is allowed to get away with eating the junkiest of MSG-laden foods from _combini_ discount shelves, and still look good enough to charm the socks off every last customer, but then again, there is much about Oikawa that defies reason.

"I think I could go for more food," Oikawa declares, as he polishes off the last of the soup and licks his lips.

"Shouldn't we head back?" Kunimi asks. "What about Kenma-san?"

Oikawa looks mildly surprised. "Pudding-chan? He's fine on his own. Come _on_ , I'm still hungry."

Kunimi palms the coin, tucks it back into its usual pocket, and notes in the objectivity of this passing moment that he isn't dreaming after all. It's _definitely_ getting heavier.

Oikawa gets _oden_ for seconds, offers Kunimi a stick of _chikuwa_ to nibble on their way back to the arcade, and practically inhales the rest.

As they push the doors open, Kunimi sees that Kenma, as confidently prophesied, _is_ fine after all. They had left him in the middle of regular weekly maintenance on the pinball row. He is there, still, head down among the machines, and Kunimi wonders if he had noticed their leaving at all, let alone returning.

(But only for a brief moment, because he has come to learn for a fact that Kenma notices just about _everything_.)

Oikawa spares his lover only a fleeting glance and a smile when he sweeps back in, his attention distracted almost immediately by a customer with a question about _Donkey Kong_. He is, Kunimi knows, only too happy to launch into the well-worn spiel of how they'd found _this_ machine in the basement of a dingy old mall in Akihabara before it got demolished, and rescued it from the scrap heap.

This, too, has become routine, Kunimi realises:

Little habits, old stories. Days crossed out on a calendar, one by one, days that start off with bickering about coffee and end with invitations to bed, days when Kenma quietly tops up the sugar in the pantry for Oikawa so it never runs out, days like this, when Oikawa and Kenma barely exchange a word, for they do not need to.

Kunimi looks up at the signboard behind the counter.

 

_Make a wish._

 

There's a tingling against his chest, then, a rising beat that wraps steady warmth around his heart.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In truth, he remembers Shizuoka.

He had been there on a roadtrip, organised by his university; he had tolerated three interminable hours in a bus that had left Tokyo before dawn, and he had arrived, after a long trek through gravel paths, at a glacier-blue lake and clouds pooling low over a rickety suspension bridge. _Yume-no-Tsuribashi_ , they called it. It had seemed a somewhat fanciful name to Kunimi. Then again, to call it a _bridge_ seemed equally as fanciful a notion, for it was barely a string of planks held together with rope and generous lashings of sheer belief.

He had stood at the precipice, looked out to the far end of the bridge as it swayed lightly in the wind. There were people walking across. There were people who had stopped in the middle, eyes closed and hands clasped.

He had not really wanted to make that crossing himself. It seemed like unnecessary effort, not to mention risk, and he very much enjoyed the safety of the ground beneath his feet. But as he'd waited, watching the sunlight on the water, the rest of the group had started making their way down the bridge one by one, and so Kunimi followed.

When he'd paused at the wishing spot, it was only to take in the view in silence. It had been chilly, and chillier still where they stood, and if he had made any wish at all, it would have been to get to the other side already. Probably.

( _still_ , he had to admit, it really had been a beautiful view.)

Years later, when he'd found himself standing outside the arcade at Yokohama's pierside, looked down at Hanamaki's text in his hand and up again at the name of the place, written in a light, flowing script that he would later came to know was Oikawa's, he had not really stopped to wonder about crossing _this_ particular threshold, and the coincidence of it only struck him when it was too late to turn back, and Kenma had already cleared a regular space for Kunimi's jacket on the pegs in the back room.

He had let it go, then, and thought nothing more of it, until the days of late.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He hangs back for a bit, one night, when Kenma's already gone upstairs and Oikawa's humming the _Super Mario_ theme tune under his breath as he flips the calendar.

"Look. It's December."

Kunimi looks down at his watch.

"It's 11:58 PM on November 30th," he says.

"It's _December_ ," Oikawa insists, as if it will become true in the speaking, and perhaps if there is anyone who can pull _that_ particular magic trick off, it is Oikawa Tooru.

"Oikawa-san," Kunimi starts.

"Hmm?"

"Did your wish come true?"

He doesn't elaborate, and from the way Oikawa stops humming and stands up slowly, silk-keen gaze seeking to meet Kunimi's own, he doesn't think he needs to. Oikawa, like Kenma, is as observant as he needs to be, and frighteningly so sometimes. Even more so than Kenma.

Oikawa lets out a long exhale.

"Pudding-chan," he says, after a pause, "is someone very important to me, Kunimi-chan."

There are kisses in his voice. They spill out lovingly from between those cupid-bow lips, scattered like glitter, like sunspots speckling the pavement, so many drops of gold waiting for someone to come and dance in their light. _There_ they are, falling like raindrops around Kunimi's ears. A kiss for every whisper on the wind, one for the night and one for the morning. One, and then a thousand more in all of his syllables, velvet-smooth. A kiss to surprise, whirling round to capture a bare spot of skin in an unguarded moment; a kiss to linger, softer than breathing.

And _this_ , too, is everything, like their moments of silence, like the way Kenma wears Oikawa's sweater.

"It's because he's so important to me that I can't answer your question," Oikawa continues.

"I'm sorry," Kunimi says. "It was a very personal question."

Oikawa waves an impatient hand in the air. "No, no, it's not that. Honestly, Kunimi-chan! I'm a _textbook open book_."

Kunimi gives him a sceptical stare at that declaration. Oikawa plows on, nonetheless.

"It's just that, it doesn't have an _ending_ , you know? Love, I mean. It's not the kind of wish that just _comes true_ and stops there. It goes on. It's the kind of wish that has to keep coming true. Every day. And then, I guess, it just becomes a part of your life."

"Is your wish still coming true, then?" Kunimi asks, though he already knows.

Oikawa simply smiles, and heaps another spoonful of sugar into his tea.

"The reason you can't sleep at night, Oikawa-san," Kunimi remarks, as he zips up his jacket, "is that you're drinking caffeinated black tea with sugar at 11:58 PM—"

"Who cares? I've got Pudding-chan. Also, it's _December_."

 

 

* * *

 

 

The season turns. Kunimi breaks out his blue muffler and winter coat, cherry-flavoured chapstick and woollen gloves so that he does not get frostbite on his fingers when cycling.

At night, he lies back in bed, holds the coin to the moonlight, and squints at it.

It is not really the coin that it is getting _heavier_ , he thinks—

It is the weight of his own nascent dreams, and something like an understanding, one that finally embraces all the dimensions of love and the ordinary life, and the extraordinary promise that can lie in the _pedestrian_.

There is snow in the mountains of Shizuoka, he hears. It will be a white Christmas there.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 _To: applepi_  
_From: saltedcrml_  
_Sent: 1:09 AM_  
Kenma-san?

 _To: saltedcrml_  
_From: applepi_  
_Sent: 1:09 AM_  
kunimi?

 _To: applepi_  
_From: saltedcrml_  
_Sent: 1:11 AM_  
I think I've figured it out. This coin thing. I know what it is.  
Can you help me?

 _To: saltedcrml_  
_From: applepi_  
_Sent: 1:12 AM_  
yeah. how?

 _To: applepi_  
_From: saltedcrml_  
_Sent: 1:13 AM_  
Just stay up a little longer. I need to make a wish.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The road that leads to the harbour is the same as it always is. So is the view of the water. Nothing has changed. And yet—

Behind him, the wind in the wires whistles electric, says, _the night is young_ , lights up constellations beyond Yokohama's ferris-wheel skyline and waits for the season's last leaves to fall in their inevitable way. It's a sound that Kunimi knows well enough.

He is not the sort of person to trail magic in his wake. He is not the sort of person to wear it under his skin, thrift-shop stardust for seekers on the street. He is no wanderer, not in the _romantic_ sense of the word; his drifting is of the considered variety, and this is where it has led him.

They're in a port city, after all, and all things wash to shore, in the end.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He is a little breathless when he knocks on the arcade doors, and Oikawa, of course, looks immaculate even in a _Space Invaders_ T-shirt and lounge pants. He's wearing his glasses. He rubs his eyes anyway, like he's seeing a mirage; he might as well _be_ one, Kunimi supposes, at this hour.

"Kunimi-chan?" He blinks. "What are you doing here at this time?"

Kunimi inclines his head in semi-apologetic greeting. "I thought you would still be up. May I come in?"

Oikawa steps aside, gesturing for him to enter. "Well, we _are_ still up, but that _really_ doesn't explain anything, you know."

Kunimi slides past him and into the arcade. He reaches for the lights, and flicks them on.

The coin by his heart is growing warm, warmer, now—

"Kunimi? You came."

He hears footsteps padding down the staircase at the back, catches a glimpse of a lithe figure in a red sweater, and there is something about the _déjà vu_ of it all that seems fitting. It had been a night like this, too, when he'd first met Oikawa and Kenma, and Kenma had descended the stairs at the back of the arcade, _awake_ , for the time for sleep was not yet upon them. Kunimi had seen it from the flickering lights on the second floor, just as he had sensed it on the wind tonight.

"What's _this_?" Oikawa whirls round. "You knew Kunimi-chan was coming?"

Indignant as he sounds, right then, he's holding a hand out to Kenma like it is simply second nature, and as Kenma makes his way across to them, he is already reaching for that hand like he _knows_ it will be there.

(He doesn't even need to look. They both don't.)

In that moment, it all melts away, comes together again like a kiss of another kind, trailing down that invisible thread of theirs.

"I was chatting with him online. But I didn't know if he really meant it… I guess you really meant it," Kenma says.

Kunimi nods, and turns to Oikawa.

"You know, Oikawa-san, I didn't make a wish. On the bridge of dreams. When I crossed it."

" _Oh_ ," breathes Oikawa, reproving. "Kunimi-chan, I thought you were _smart_."

"Being smart isn't always the answer," Kenma murmurs. "Sometimes, you need to be a bit of an idiot."

Whether he is talking to Oikawa, to Kunimi, or to himself, Kunimi does not know. Perhaps it is actually all three at once.

"Or a dreamer," Kenma adds, looking at Oikawa.

"Or both," says Oikawa, magnanimous.

Kunimi takes the coin from his pocket and holds it out, palm upward, so Oikawa and Kenma can see its star-glass gleam; in the dim lights of the arcade after hours, it pulses with even more brilliance than before, like it is determined to be the most remarkable thing in this place of minor miracles.

"I think this is the wish I didn't make. And I think..."

He cuts a path through the centre aisle, and stops beside a familiar yellow machine.

"Remember when you told me not to lose this in the Pac-Man machine? I think you were wrong, Oikawa-san."

He pauses, then, and recalls Hanamaki's words.

"A dream vending machine," he says, "for a dream coin."

Kenma says nothing. He steps back, smiles, and exchanges a glance with Oikawa across the console. His hair falls out of his eyes as he tilts his head, a curtain drawn; the revelation a pale golden glow that dances like spinning fireflies in a jar, and then Oikawa smiles too.

"I was wrong," he admits. "Cherish this moment, Kunimi-chan. I don't _say_ this sort of thing often."

Kenma bends down to the control panel at the side of the machine. He switches it on.

"What will you wish for?" he asks, looking up at Kunimi.

Kunimi pauses, watching the familiar loading screen blink into life.

He thinks of the paths that have led him here. He had never wanted  _entanglements_ , or complications; he would have been content, he knows, to go on being a leaf on the wind, but as he closes a fist round the coin in his palm one last time, he thinks that  _even so—_

That is life, too, and it is no overwrought drama, nor _happily ever after_. It goes on.

Second chances to make wishes don't come every day. Kunimi takes a deep breath.

He looks down at his watch.

It's a Wednesday.

"Love, I guess," he says, and _inserts new coin_.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is [Yume no Tsuribashi](http://tadaimajp.com/2015/07/bridge-of-dreams/) in Shizuoka. The thing they say about wishes for love coming true is real.  
> The idea of the vintage arcade by the pier came from a visit to the fascinating [Musée Mécanique](http://museemecaniquesf.com) in San Francisco. In the end, Kenma and Oikawa's arcade grew into something different that took on a life of its own, but that's where it originated.
> 
> thank you for reading! ♥ you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nahyutas) or [tumblr](http://themorninglark.tumblr.com), where I'm usually yelling about rarepairs and quiet characters.


End file.
